"Mañana es feriado"

Here's a post that I forgot to post a while ago about my trip to Mendoza:

So, I swear I have heard that phrase a million times since coming to Chile..."mañana es feriado" aka "tomorrow is a holiday!" I don't know how they have so many holidays, but it seems that about every other week there is a holiday celebrating something or another, which will be nice now that I'm in school and won't have to go to school when it's feriado, but, it can be a little frustrating when everything is closed. Especially because a lot of times feriados are on Mondays, and already on Sundays 75% of stores are closed, so then it's two days in a row of everything being closed. This happened when we were in Mendoza, we got there on Saturday night, Sunday everything was closed, then Monday even more things were closed. It ended up working out though, because most of the things we did were just out doorsy and we were still able to do everything because it didn't depend on things being open.

We had a week break between when ILP ended and when real classes started, I decided to go to Mendoza, Argentina with a few friends during the break, just to get out of the city and do some things outside. Saturday morning my friend Carolyn and I showed up at the bus station and bought our tickets for Mendoza. The bus was pretty nice; we had to get the semi-cama seats because they were the only ones that they had. But, they gave us food and everything on the way over. The bus ride itself was about 6 hours including clearing customs and everything. It's a really pretty ride though, because we had to cross over the Andes and drive through the countryside and everything. At one point during the ride, Carolyn and I weren't sure if we were in Argentina or Chile (because we had no idea what kind of customs control they had), but we later figured out there is a real customs check point, so you can definitely tell when you cross from one country into the other. Customs is literally on top of the mountains, meaning it's really cold when you have to get out and stand in line to get your passport stamped and then have them check your luggage. But, overall, the bus ride wasn't too bad.

Saturday afternoon and night we just hung out around our hostel, which was right near the main plaza in town. We wandered around Plaza Independencia (the main one in town); there was a market so we checked that out, got some cotton candy which was delicious, people watched...Then we went and found a restaurant that had choripan (a sandwich type of food that is famous in Argentina and Chile). When we went into the restaurant it was only us and one other family--who kept staring at us! However, by the time we left, the restaurant was packed with people. Apparently we went to eat too early (at 9pm).

The next day we went biking around the huge park that's at the edge of town. We met a guy from Colombia who was really cool, and the 3 of us went together. We rented bikes from a place near our hostel and headed out. In the park it was like it's own little town--they had a zoo, golf course, soccer stadium, theatre, lake, fountains, etc. We spent most of the day biking around and checking it out and hiking up the hill at the back of the park. The hike up the hill was probably the most fun thing of the day...the view as we were hiking up was incredible. We could see the whole city and country side around it. It's really dry and desert-y, and really pretty scenery. We also saw one of the stadiums where the Copa America was played which was pretty cool; we really wanted to go in but unfortunately it was all gated off, so we didn't get to go in, only see it from afar. After biking around we stopped to get Pancho's for lunch (Argentian hotdogs...aka hotdogs with lots of different types of condiments on top, pretty tasty actually). Then we went to watch the final of the Copa America which was being played in Buenos Aires. However, it was between Uruguay and Paraguay, so there wasn't a whole lot of interest in Argentina.

The next day we went on a trekking, repelling, hot springs trip.

I guess I didn't quite finish...